The HOC team started to slowly filter into the house. Our leader was Colonel John Edwards from Mississippi. The finest commander I’ve ever had in 30 years in the military. All of the other houses in the district were according to rank. There were enlisted houses, lieutenant’s houses, captain’s houses, etc. We were the only ones that lived as a unit. The HOC team lived in the HOC house. We had everyone from Colonel Edwards down to our lowest ranking soldier (and only female) Specialist Christine Bierwirth. Colonel Edwards pushed for this and what a spectacular decision it was. By the end of the tour, everyone wanted to transfer to our team so that they could live in our house.
The doors had all been broken during clearing operations, so we had no way to secure them. Also, this was before the Green Zone came into existence so we just lived in downtown Baghdad in a nice neighborhood. As a result, we had to take turns on guard duty pulling one hour shifts sitting in the living room fully armed in case of intruders.
By this time, all the ammo that I had mentioned earlier was being rounded up and stored at a huge ammo dump. Colonel Edwards went to a staff meeting at the palace. They were all in the Grand Ballroom and everyone took off their helmets and flack jackets. Colonel Edwards told me that he kept all his gear on. He had a funny feeling. Now, COL Edwards had a Special Forces (Green Beret) combat patch – for something that he could not talk about – so I trusted his feelings. During the meeting and about 800 yards away, a group of insurgents had infiltrated the ammo dump and started it on fire. This caused an explosion so large that all the remaining glass shards still in the windows of the Ball Room fell, the chandeliers shook, plaster fell off the walls, and people lost their balance. It was like an earthquake. By then, everyone was scrambling for their helmets and flack jackets. He stood there and smiled. Choice.
Around this time, the contents of Saddam’s son Uday’s liquor cabinet were being distributed via the NCO network. Uday was reputed to have the world’s largest private supply of alcohol. In one evening me and several buddies polished off two $3,000 bottles of French Cognac. All of us had stocked our liquor cabinets with the finest scotches, vodkas, gins, etc. that money could buy (or in our case that we could loot). In addition, Baghdad had a brewery in town. The managers had run off, but the brewery workers kept the place open and churned out some really decent Iraqi beer. A little sweet tasting, but a very distinct dark beer. Special forces guys hooked us up with this little bennie. Civil Affairs is part of Special Operations. So we habitually operated in conjunction with the Green Berets and spec ops units from the Air Force as well. So we always had a line on the best stuff because these guys could get it for us. Not long after we moved in we had satellite TV from Dubai. Later on, I had satellite radio with speakers in my room. Classic rock 24/7. No commercials.
As the HOC team, our job was to set up the Center in a large location and begin to assist the Iraqis. While the Command was reconnoitering a site for us, COL Edwards kept us busy by sending us out on missions. The first mission we went on was to the Iraq National Museum.
Another urban myth is that the Iraq National Museum was totally looted while the American Army stood by and did nothing. This was all over the news. In fact, the “looting” was a very controlled, deliberate affair. Only the best stuff was taken and the “looters” knew where to look. We found out later that the curator was a Saddam loyalist and plotted the “looting” of his own museum. Nevertheless, some looting did take place after his boys were done. We went to the museum one day and formed a perimeter around it while COL Edwards went inside. Iraqis are generally very curious and friendly people. The longer we stood out there, they came up to us and tried out their English. Then, people started to come up and in a very furtive manner started to hand us artifacts from the museum! After the looting started, the locals in the neighborhood went in and took artifacts to their houses for safekeeping. So now when we arrived, they started to hand the stuff over to us. So all of my pockets were filled with cuneiform tablets, Babylonian fertility goddesses, gold necklaces, etc. At night, we put all the stuff on our living room floor. We had enough stuff for a traveling exhibit! This happened for several days. We had a staff archeologist and he catalogued everything. Then he returned it to the newly secured museum for safekeeping. I’m waiting for the day in the future when a traveling exhibit of Iraqi archeological artifacts comes to Washington. I want to see if the stuff that I had carried away in my pants pockets is on display! In the end, there were significant losses to the museum, but nothing remotely approaching what was reported in the news. Thanks to the Iraqis that lived in the neighborhood of the museum.
By now we had received word that President Bush was putting the Syrians on notice that he was pissed off that they were letting Saddam’s henchmen into their country by the busload. When he started saber rattling, we started planning. We’re here, why not take all these bastards down at once! We got out our maps and started to plot a route to the Syrian border just in case the word came down to invade. Alas, nothing. So I have to put off a visit to Damascus and the Crusader castles for another time.
April 30, 2003 – COL Edwards drew a mission for us that day. It was a good one. We were to provide personal security to a 4-man team from ORHA (Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, later becoming CPA – Coalition Provisional Authority). Their mission that day was twofold: observe some de-mining operations being conducted by the Marines south of Hillah (a town about an hour’s drive south of Baghdad), and to check the establishment of ORHA South HQ located near the same town. We had four guys with us, all civilian weenies. Or so I thought. As I’ve said before, Iraq was awash with weapons, so by this time we all had a second weapon. In my case, I also carried an AK-47 – easy to use and plenty of ammo around. The ORHA guys had a GM SUV that they were driving in with air conditioned comfort. We drove in our open air Hummers. No armor. I approached one of the ORHA guys. He had a handlebar mustache and was wearing a Smokey the Bear hat. “Typical Foreign Service Officer” I thought to myself. Eccentric, a weenie. I handed him my AK-47 and asked him if he knew how to use it. He immediately pulled back the charging handle, locked and loaded, looked me in the eye and said, “United States Marine Corps, Vietnam, 1969-1970”. So much for stereotypes! You rock dude! Maybe you should be protecting me? Knowing that our ORHA guys were fully capable of protecting themselves left us to survey the surrounding countryside and towns that we went through with having to constantly regard direct threats to them. We drove in four vehicles: a Hummer, their two SUV’s, and another Hummer. It was a smooth drive down to Hillah. Hillah itself has an old town in the middle with streets so narrow that you could literally touch the houses from your Hummer as you drove by. Lots of people. Sometimes the narrow street opened up into a market area. You would drive through the market area and the street would narrow again. For this convoy I sat behind the Hummer driver in the last vehicle. My area of observation was six to midnight. South of town, we came upon the Marines. They were out in a field removing land mines. God bless’em. Not me. Couldn’t pay me enough. We observed their activity for awhile and then proceeded to the Babylon Hotel. This hotel was to become the HQ building for ORHA South. ORHA has just taken it over and had recalled the old cleaning staff to clean the place up. They already had the bar stocked and all the rooms were being cleaned and supplied with fresh linens. While the civilians met with their counterparts, my buddy Kenny and I went upstairs. We walked down the halls. All the rooms were open and clean. Get this – with working toilets!! First ones we’d seen in Iraq. So we went into one of the rooms, took turns guarding the door, and took our first civilized dumps in country. With a river view – the Euphrates. Nice. From there, we went to Babylon. THE Babylon. The Polish Army was using an old Iraqi Army base as their base of operations. They were well established when we got there. At Babylon, there is a prominent hill rising up a couple hundred feet above the plain with a palace on top. Saddam had the palace AND the hill made. We went up the road leading to the palace. The Marines were there. Great view. You could see all of the ruins of ancient Babylon spread out before you.
Mission complete, we set off back to Baghdad. Late afternoon. Driving back through Hillah. As we drove through one of those narrow streets, I was reaching out of my vehicle and shaking hands with Iraqis on the sidewalks. We came out into the market area in the center of town. People everywhere. Then, POP POP POP POP. Gunfire. I stared down at my M-16, move the selector switch from “safe” to “fire”. Finger on trigger. My “sector”, however, consisted of the house right in front of me. I could reach out and knock on the door. COL Edwards, who was driving, yelled GO! GO! GO! The entire convoy sped up and we hauled ass through the rest of Hillah! There were just too many people around and no fixed targets, so we didn’t want to shoot up a marketplace and waste a bunch of civilians. And they were surprised too. If they had warning, the streets would have been empty, or at least you wouldn’t have seen any kids playing around. These are sure fire signs that you’ve got trouble. Why was COL Edwards driving? All of our senior officers drove in the early days. They were only armed with 9mm Beretta pistols, while we enlisted guys all had M-16’s, plus AK-47’s, Sten guns, MP-3’s, whatever we picked up off the battlefield. After six months there, though, all officers had been issued M-16’s in addition to their pistols. Back to driving, this was fine with me. Also, COl Edwards loved to drive and was crazy - keeping up with him was difficult on a good day. But that's how I know that a Hummer can go 90 mph. The rest of the trip home was uneventful. But it being the first time in my life that I’ve ever been shot at, I could only think of what Winston Churchill wrote about his first encounter: “There’s nothing as exhilarating as being shot at without effect”.
The doors had all been broken during clearing operations, so we had no way to secure them. Also, this was before the Green Zone came into existence so we just lived in downtown Baghdad in a nice neighborhood. As a result, we had to take turns on guard duty pulling one hour shifts sitting in the living room fully armed in case of intruders.
By this time, all the ammo that I had mentioned earlier was being rounded up and stored at a huge ammo dump. Colonel Edwards went to a staff meeting at the palace. They were all in the Grand Ballroom and everyone took off their helmets and flack jackets. Colonel Edwards told me that he kept all his gear on. He had a funny feeling. Now, COL Edwards had a Special Forces (Green Beret) combat patch – for something that he could not talk about – so I trusted his feelings. During the meeting and about 800 yards away, a group of insurgents had infiltrated the ammo dump and started it on fire. This caused an explosion so large that all the remaining glass shards still in the windows of the Ball Room fell, the chandeliers shook, plaster fell off the walls, and people lost their balance. It was like an earthquake. By then, everyone was scrambling for their helmets and flack jackets. He stood there and smiled. Choice.
Around this time, the contents of Saddam’s son Uday’s liquor cabinet were being distributed via the NCO network. Uday was reputed to have the world’s largest private supply of alcohol. In one evening me and several buddies polished off two $3,000 bottles of French Cognac. All of us had stocked our liquor cabinets with the finest scotches, vodkas, gins, etc. that money could buy (or in our case that we could loot). In addition, Baghdad had a brewery in town. The managers had run off, but the brewery workers kept the place open and churned out some really decent Iraqi beer. A little sweet tasting, but a very distinct dark beer. Special forces guys hooked us up with this little bennie. Civil Affairs is part of Special Operations. So we habitually operated in conjunction with the Green Berets and spec ops units from the Air Force as well. So we always had a line on the best stuff because these guys could get it for us. Not long after we moved in we had satellite TV from Dubai. Later on, I had satellite radio with speakers in my room. Classic rock 24/7. No commercials.
As the HOC team, our job was to set up the Center in a large location and begin to assist the Iraqis. While the Command was reconnoitering a site for us, COL Edwards kept us busy by sending us out on missions. The first mission we went on was to the Iraq National Museum.
Another urban myth is that the Iraq National Museum was totally looted while the American Army stood by and did nothing. This was all over the news. In fact, the “looting” was a very controlled, deliberate affair. Only the best stuff was taken and the “looters” knew where to look. We found out later that the curator was a Saddam loyalist and plotted the “looting” of his own museum. Nevertheless, some looting did take place after his boys were done. We went to the museum one day and formed a perimeter around it while COL Edwards went inside. Iraqis are generally very curious and friendly people. The longer we stood out there, they came up to us and tried out their English. Then, people started to come up and in a very furtive manner started to hand us artifacts from the museum! After the looting started, the locals in the neighborhood went in and took artifacts to their houses for safekeeping. So now when we arrived, they started to hand the stuff over to us. So all of my pockets were filled with cuneiform tablets, Babylonian fertility goddesses, gold necklaces, etc. At night, we put all the stuff on our living room floor. We had enough stuff for a traveling exhibit! This happened for several days. We had a staff archeologist and he catalogued everything. Then he returned it to the newly secured museum for safekeeping. I’m waiting for the day in the future when a traveling exhibit of Iraqi archeological artifacts comes to Washington. I want to see if the stuff that I had carried away in my pants pockets is on display! In the end, there were significant losses to the museum, but nothing remotely approaching what was reported in the news. Thanks to the Iraqis that lived in the neighborhood of the museum.
By now we had received word that President Bush was putting the Syrians on notice that he was pissed off that they were letting Saddam’s henchmen into their country by the busload. When he started saber rattling, we started planning. We’re here, why not take all these bastards down at once! We got out our maps and started to plot a route to the Syrian border just in case the word came down to invade. Alas, nothing. So I have to put off a visit to Damascus and the Crusader castles for another time.
April 30, 2003 – COL Edwards drew a mission for us that day. It was a good one. We were to provide personal security to a 4-man team from ORHA (Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, later becoming CPA – Coalition Provisional Authority). Their mission that day was twofold: observe some de-mining operations being conducted by the Marines south of Hillah (a town about an hour’s drive south of Baghdad), and to check the establishment of ORHA South HQ located near the same town. We had four guys with us, all civilian weenies. Or so I thought. As I’ve said before, Iraq was awash with weapons, so by this time we all had a second weapon. In my case, I also carried an AK-47 – easy to use and plenty of ammo around. The ORHA guys had a GM SUV that they were driving in with air conditioned comfort. We drove in our open air Hummers. No armor. I approached one of the ORHA guys. He had a handlebar mustache and was wearing a Smokey the Bear hat. “Typical Foreign Service Officer” I thought to myself. Eccentric, a weenie. I handed him my AK-47 and asked him if he knew how to use it. He immediately pulled back the charging handle, locked and loaded, looked me in the eye and said, “United States Marine Corps, Vietnam, 1969-1970”. So much for stereotypes! You rock dude! Maybe you should be protecting me? Knowing that our ORHA guys were fully capable of protecting themselves left us to survey the surrounding countryside and towns that we went through with having to constantly regard direct threats to them. We drove in four vehicles: a Hummer, their two SUV’s, and another Hummer. It was a smooth drive down to Hillah. Hillah itself has an old town in the middle with streets so narrow that you could literally touch the houses from your Hummer as you drove by. Lots of people. Sometimes the narrow street opened up into a market area. You would drive through the market area and the street would narrow again. For this convoy I sat behind the Hummer driver in the last vehicle. My area of observation was six to midnight. South of town, we came upon the Marines. They were out in a field removing land mines. God bless’em. Not me. Couldn’t pay me enough. We observed their activity for awhile and then proceeded to the Babylon Hotel. This hotel was to become the HQ building for ORHA South. ORHA has just taken it over and had recalled the old cleaning staff to clean the place up. They already had the bar stocked and all the rooms were being cleaned and supplied with fresh linens. While the civilians met with their counterparts, my buddy Kenny and I went upstairs. We walked down the halls. All the rooms were open and clean. Get this – with working toilets!! First ones we’d seen in Iraq. So we went into one of the rooms, took turns guarding the door, and took our first civilized dumps in country. With a river view – the Euphrates. Nice. From there, we went to Babylon. THE Babylon. The Polish Army was using an old Iraqi Army base as their base of operations. They were well established when we got there. At Babylon, there is a prominent hill rising up a couple hundred feet above the plain with a palace on top. Saddam had the palace AND the hill made. We went up the road leading to the palace. The Marines were there. Great view. You could see all of the ruins of ancient Babylon spread out before you.
Mission complete, we set off back to Baghdad. Late afternoon. Driving back through Hillah. As we drove through one of those narrow streets, I was reaching out of my vehicle and shaking hands with Iraqis on the sidewalks. We came out into the market area in the center of town. People everywhere. Then, POP POP POP POP. Gunfire. I stared down at my M-16, move the selector switch from “safe” to “fire”. Finger on trigger. My “sector”, however, consisted of the house right in front of me. I could reach out and knock on the door. COL Edwards, who was driving, yelled GO! GO! GO! The entire convoy sped up and we hauled ass through the rest of Hillah! There were just too many people around and no fixed targets, so we didn’t want to shoot up a marketplace and waste a bunch of civilians. And they were surprised too. If they had warning, the streets would have been empty, or at least you wouldn’t have seen any kids playing around. These are sure fire signs that you’ve got trouble. Why was COL Edwards driving? All of our senior officers drove in the early days. They were only armed with 9mm Beretta pistols, while we enlisted guys all had M-16’s, plus AK-47’s, Sten guns, MP-3’s, whatever we picked up off the battlefield. After six months there, though, all officers had been issued M-16’s in addition to their pistols. Back to driving, this was fine with me. Also, COl Edwards loved to drive and was crazy - keeping up with him was difficult on a good day. But that's how I know that a Hummer can go 90 mph. The rest of the trip home was uneventful. But it being the first time in my life that I’ve ever been shot at, I could only think of what Winston Churchill wrote about his first encounter: “There’s nothing as exhilarating as being shot at without effect”.
Fascinating account.
ReplyDeleteI think during that time I was busy scrounging the basement of the Council of Ministers Hall (burning pyramid building on CNN).
The time before the Green Zone was the best...
ReplyDelete